The Archers kept their house cooler than Gretchen was used to, but she was wearing her new wool socks and feeling rather cozy when the door burst open without warning and there stood Will, dripping and blue-lipped, pale as death. Gretchen nearly screamed, but then someone appeared behind him, as tall as he, and also soaked to the bone.
Asia stepped through the back door and into the kitchen, like a creature crossing from one dimension into another, and Gretchen dropped her mug. It shattered across the floor, sending shards of wet porcelain under the cupboards.
Everyone was still; nobody knew what to say.
They might have stayed that way forever, still as statues, turned to stone, but Bananas chose that moment to strut in. She took one look at Will and darted into the living room.
“You’re not dead,” Gretchen said to Asia. Emotions whipped through her at dizzying speed: fear, relief, joy, dread, confusion, envy. Yes, envy, for there was Asia, looking even more beautiful than Gretchen remembered, standing beside Will. Gretchen called in an instant all of the jealousy she’d felt surrounding Asia, the fear she’d had that Will had been falling in love with her. And here she was—alive.
“I know,” Asia said.
Will walked to the counter and grabbed some paper towels, then began gathering up the broken crockery.
“You’re making it worse,” Gretchen said as Will wiped up the spill, shedding his own water all over the floor. “Leave it. You need to dry off.”
Will stood up with a sigh. He looked at Asia. “You can borrow some of my stuff,” he told her. He reached under the sink and grabbed three ragged old towels that they’d used to dry Guernsey after her baths. Asia and Will rubbed themselves off, and he motioned for her to follow him up the stairs.
They disappeared, leaving Gretchen alone with her confusion. She didn’t know what to think, so she busied herself with cleaning up the broken cup, gathering the large pieces and placing them in the trash, mopping up the smaller ones with paper towels. She took the old towels that Will had dropped on the floor and dumped them into the hamper in her room. Then she grabbed the mop and ran it over the wooden planks. When she had finished, she put the mop away and went to sit on the couch in the living room. Bananas padded her way over to Gretchen’s lap, then curled up comfortably.
Will appeared first, barefoot and in fresh jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. His hair was uncombed but had been rubbed dry. It was slicked away from his face, and Gretchen was surprised by the full view of his scar, which was usually obscured by a curtain of hair.
He sat down across from her, perched on one of the horribly uncomfortable chairs. He leaned forward and looked into Gretchen’s face so seriously that she squirmed. Bananas raised her head and gave Gretchen a reproachful look, then went back to dreaming. “We saved the boat,” Will announced, as if Gretchen had any idea what he meant.
“What?”
He thought a moment and started over. “Asia’s come to help us,” Will said, and that one sentence sent a dagger of anger through Gretchen’s heart. A moment before, her confusion had been giving way to relief … but now she felt intense mistrust.
“Why?” Gretchen snapped, just as Asia appeared in the doorway.
She was dressed in Will’s jeans and a blue-and-white button-down shirt, her black hair raked into damp rows. The clothes were baggy on her, but somehow she made them look elegant. “You’re in danger, Gretchen,” Asia said. Her voice was gentle, compassionate, and Gretchen felt the anger melt away. “But surely you know that.”
Gretchen shook her head. “It’s too much.”
“I know.”
“Let me just get used to seeing you.”
“Okay.” Asia turned, and Gretchen could see that her damp hair was making her shirt cling to her back. Asia disappeared into the kitchen, and Will put his head in his hands. Seconds ticked by in silence.
Asia reappeared carrying a glass of water, which she handed to Gretchen. Three deep gulps and Gretchen felt better. Asia sat down in the chair beside Will’s and looked at Gretchen steadily.
Gretchen didn’t know how to phrase her question politely. Finally, she just blurted, “Why aren’t you dead?”
“In a way, I am.”
“Don’t talk to me in riddles, okay? Things are confusing enough.” Gretchen looked at Will, whose head was still down. He had heard the story already, she supposed.
“It was no ordinary fire,” Asia countered. “The fire of vengeance burned through us, Gretchen, but it didn’t destroy our bodies. It destroyed our immortality.”
“You mean those things are still out there?” Gretchen whispered.
“Out there—under a death sentence. As am I. But they are not likely to come here. Calypso and her band have spent thousands of years in the water. They can’t walk among humans as easily as I can.” Asia looked outside, where the rain was starting to ease. The dark clouds had turned to pale gray. Two birds sang their approval. “Still, I suppose I should be grateful. In a way, you saved me.”
“What? How?”
“You know that I was unable to break a promise, unable to lie. But I did break a promise—the promise to deliver you to Calypso.”
“Deliver me?” Gretchen barely dared to breathe. She stared at Will. “I think there’s something you forgot to tell me.”
Will’s face burned, and he stared at the floor. “She couldn’t do it.” He looked up at Gretchen. “She tried to save you.”
“After she tried to kill me?”
“I was bound to Calypso by a promise I made years ago. A promise I was forced to make, to save the life of someone I cared for,” Asia explained.
“I thought you had died for me,” Gretchen cried. “Do you know what that feels like?”
“I would have,” Asia said. “I thought I was going to. That—or worse. The penalty if I did not deliver you was that I would turn into a zombie.”
Gretchen paused a moment to take this in. “You don’t look like a zombie to me.”
“No. Because your fire made me mortal. If that hadn’t happened, I would have become … something else.”
“How do you know you’re mortal?”
Asia smiled, shrugged. “My strength is weakened. And—for the first time—I know what fear feels like.”
Gretchen sighed, feeling the anger again seep out of her slowly. She knew what it was like to be in an impossible situation. That was something she and Asia had in common. “I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t for you to feel sorry for me. That was a decision I made.”
Gretchen covered her face with her hands. “I can’t believe I killed them.”
“It had to happen, Gretchen,” Asia said gently. “The universe exists in delicate balance, and has been struggling to blot out the darkness the seekriegers created from the beginning. The Fury, Tisiphone, pursued them for many years. Over the ages. She is one of three sisters, the Eumenides. She is the one who avenges murder, and she left the underworld and was born into human form to stop them.”
“Tisiphone.” Gretchen heard the word with a shade of recognition, and wondered if she had read about the Fury in a textbook somewhere. “From the underworld.”
“Every five hundred years, Tisiphone is consumed in fire and reborn,” Asia explained. “Like a phoenix. From the ashes of destruction comes new life. And now, Will tells me, you have both been having accidents. That things have been happening—a dog attack, a mugging—that are beyond your explanation.”
Gretchen remembered the face in the waterspout.
Gretchen’s mind was swimming, struggling to put the pieces together. Will raised his head. He looked at her with a mixture of expectancy and fear. “So is Tisiphone angry that I killed the Sirens before she did?” Gretchen asked. “Is that why she’s after me—after Will and me?”
“After you?” Asia cocked her head. “I’m sorry, Gretchen, you’ve misunderstood me.”
Gretchen nodded, but the fog in her mind only thickened. She couldn’t tell if it was the mental str
ain or simply the melody of Asia’s voice that made her want to curl up in a ball and fall asleep, forget the world right there on the couch. But she forced herself to pay attention, to watch Asia’s lips as she formed the words.
“Tisiphone doesn’t want to kill you,” Asia said. “Tisiphone is you.”
The rain fell, light and steady, dampening Gretchen’s hair, collecting heavily on her eyelashes, like tears. Her new sneakers slogged through the wet grass, picking up green clippings and mud. A light October chill hung in the air, but it wasn’t unpleasant. The clouds had lifted, and the late-afternoon sun was making a reluctant appearance.
She was walking toward the bay.
Gretchen didn’t know why. Maybe she wanted to look out over open space. Maybe she needed to see the scene of her crime. Of Tisiphone’s crime.
Tisiphone is you.
No, she thought. No. I’m Gretchen. I’m Gretchen and no one else.
But that thought was followed closely by another: Who were you when that mugger attacked you?
She had felt something come over her then, almost as if she had surrendered herself to someone else. And when she set the bay on fire—she had become someone else then, too. Every time the fire burned through her, it was as if she was channeling someone’s power.
But why? Why me?
She thought of her mother then—the woman she had grown up thinking of as her mother, Yvonne. She had always treated Gretchen with a certain measure of restraint, almost fear. Gretchen remembered one morning when she was small and had padded softly into her parents’ bedroom. Yvonne was sleeping on her stomach, her lips slightly parted. Dark hair splashed across the pale green pillowcase. The blue and green duvet was pulled up around her, like a cloud, or a wave. Gretchen thought she looked like a sleeping angel. She touched her mother’s arm gently, to wake her. Yvonne had woken with a start—shot up in bed. She stared at Gretchen with wide eyes, as if her daughter had stepped directly out of Yvonne’s nightmare.
“Mama?” Gretchen said.
Yvonne started to shake her head then, but her movements had woken Johnny, who grinned sleepily. “Hey, sugar bunny,” he said happily.
Gretchen walked around the bed and stepped into his arms, her heart pounding, as if she had caught her mother’s fear, like a cold. But her father’s warm arms brought her back to life, and by the time he released her, Yvonne had recovered. She was even smiling, laughing, suggesting pancakes, like any regular Saturday morning.
Gretchen didn’t think her mother knew the truth—how could she? But she had suspected something. What had Mafer said? We know things about people. Perhaps Yvonne had known but not known, and that was what kept her from loving Gretchen the way a mother should. The way Gretchen had always wanted.
The tears came then, flowing fast, mingling with the rain that had wet her cheeks. She supposed that there were people in the world who might be happy to learn that they had amazing powers. She could hear Angus joking: “Dude, you’re a superhero!”
But she had never asked to be a superhero. And she had a dark premonition that it involved sacrifices she wasn’t prepared to make.
I just want to be Gretchen, that’s all.
Her clothes were growing heavy with water as she climbed the small hill that bordered the bay. Sun filtered through the clouds in thick shafts, cutting the gray with buttery yellow. The water was calm but dappled, like a sheet of old glass. In the distance, the green shrubbery that topped the cliffs had turned dark in the dreary light. It was as if the color had drained out of the scene, all except for the columns of light that shone down on the water.
Footsteps approached from behind her.
Gretchen had supposed that Will would follow her, so she was surprised when Asia’s voice said, “I suspected you would come here.”
Gretchen looked out over the level water, trying to imagine the surface as it burned, the anguished cries of the seekriegers as they suffered and died. “I don’t want to be an executioner,” Gretchen said.
“We can’t always choose what we are,” Asia replied. Her voice was even, but also sad.
Gretchen turned to face her. Asia’s green eyes held her gaze, and Gretchen wondered how she felt to be a Siren. Even though she was mortal now, she was far from human. Had she ever wished she were? Perhaps not. After all, she wasn’t like Gretchen. She hadn’t thought herself to be one thing and then discovered she was something else.
“I was found in the ashes,” Gretchen said, the thought just occurring to her. “My mother died in a fire.”
Asia looked out at the columns of light. They were so thick they gave the illusion of holding up the sky. “Your mother was consumed in that fire. She died, and was reborn. As you.”
“You’re saying that I have no mother. Or—that I am my own mother?”
Asia shrugged. “Tisiphone has no beginning, and no end. At least, not one that I know of. She—you—have existed longer than any of my kind.”
Gretchen felt as if the picture being painted for her kept shifting and morphing, taking on new shape and meaning the harder she looked. “What about me—Gretchen?”
Her voice sounded thin, almost whiny to her ears, and she hated it.
“Every incarnation of Tisiphone is different,” Asia told her. “You are you and you are her. Your strength lies in both of you.” Asia touched Gretchen’s hand gently. “You are Gretchen. But you are also a Fury.”
“No,” Gretchen whispered, shaking her head slowly. “That’s not what I am.”
Asia nodded and looked out at the clouds again. The rain had stopped completely, and the clouds were breaking into fat clumps, allowing the sky to show through in bits and pieces. The shapes shifted slowly as they moved across the sky, refusing to be defined in space.
“Not yet. Not fully,” Asia agreed. “Tisiphone is what you are becoming. That was why Calypso wanted me to deliver you before you awakened. While you were still at your weakest.”
Asia turned her head, as if she heard something. “Will is calling for you,” she said, a moment before Gretchen heard the distant shout. She heard it again, and Will appeared, running toward them. He had a cell phone in his hand. His hair was dry now, but his feet were still bare, which told Gretchen that whatever he had come to tell them, the news was bad.
Her heart felt as if it had shrunk, constricting the flow of the blood through her body. I don’t want to hear it, she thought, but she couldn’t stop him from coming toward them, couldn’t stop the news from being what it was. She felt like a stick borne forward on a swiftly flowing river, powerless to change course, following a route worn into rock over ages, as changeless as the march of time.
“Gretchen!” Will raced toward her. “I just talked to Angus.” He was breathless, his face flushed. He looked beautiful and terrified. “Kirk is freaking out.”
“What?”
“He’s at the diner, totally flipping. He’s got a knife and is threatening to kill himself, but he’s demanding to talk to you.” Will’s body was tensed; he looked ready to take flight.
Gretchen clung to Asia’s arm, and the seekrieger placed a strong arm around her waist, supporting her. To her shame, Gretchen’s first reaction was anger. She didn’t want to go help Kirk. She had other problems to deal with. She didn’t need to handle Kirk’s drama right now.
But he was at Bella’s—with a knife. Anger gave way to guilt. I’m responsible for the fact that he’s there, she realized. An image of Kirk’s sad, frightened eyes flashed in her mind. Compassion overwhelmed her.
“We have to go now,” Asia said.
“Yes,” Gretchen agreed.
At once they ran, together, racing back across the field. With every step, Gretchen felt herself driven forward, toward a destiny that she wasn’t sure she wanted but didn’t think she could avoid.
Chapter Eighteen
From A Cultural Study of Madness,
by Philip de Guerre, PhD
Many cultures hold beliefs in spirit, or demonic, possession, and it is
mentioned specifically at several points in the Bible, as well as other sacred texts. We now know, of course, that spirit possession unequivocally does not exist—the symptoms ascribed to those “possessed” mirror accounts of people with several different kinds of mental illness or psychiatric disorders, including Tourette’s syndrome, bipolar disorder, psychosis, multiple personality disorder, and so on. As you see, society finds a way to label different types of “abnormal” or dissociative behavior, often endowing these people with powers beyond those of mere mortals.
Angus was waiting by the back entrance, hunched into a navy peacoat, when Will screeched to a stop in the parking lot. He slammed Carl’s truck into park and yanked open the door. Gretchen was already out the other side, Asia spilling onto the asphalt behind her.
“That kid is so fired,” Angus said as Gretchen brushed past him and into the diner.
The first face Gretchen saw was Angel’s. His jaw was slack, his complexion ashy—Angel, whose first response was always rage, looked sick and frightened. Lisette was parked at the doorway to the dining room, making sure that no customers tried to intervene. Kirk was on the floor, writhing and singing in a language that Gretchen didn’t know. The words were harsh and guttural, strange and ugly to her ear. In his hand was a boning knife, and there was blood on his sleeve and a bloody handprint on his white apron. Dark red drops splattered and smeared the white tiles, as if he had half dragged himself across the floor, beneath the metal prep table.
“Kirk,” Gretchen called softly.
His head snapped toward her, and for a moment he smiled softly, gratefully, like he was really Kirk, and was really happy to see her. Then the expression darkened, and a strange fire came into the dark pools of his eyes. He sang a few more words, then—with an awkward, contorting gesture—plunged the boning knife into his thigh.
Will gasped. “Jesus, Kirk!”
“Oh shit!” Angus pulled out his cell phone and started to dial emergency services. Asia grabbed the phone out of his hand and tossed it into the sink, where it landed with a metal clang. “I just bought that!” Angus protested, then withered a little under Asia’s glare.